Link to PRI’s The World  Just what is a ‘caliphate’ scroll down about a third of the page and click on the recording.

I want to share this link with you. I listened to this program this morning, the article aired June 25 and is about ISIS who is interested in reestablishing a “caliphate”.  I am a big fan of the news program PRI’s The World, hosted by Marco Werman.  The recording is 6:46 long.

Living in Saudi Arabia has focused my interested on what is happening in the Middle East and when an article either print or recorded comes along I pay attention to it. I thought this recording was very interesting because it not only talks about ISIS but also about Sunni-Shia issues and goes into some history on their secular divide.

I have two more posts to do on Oman and for the month of July I will start a series on Ramadan which starts this Saturday, 28th June.

Below is Bob’s babbling, why I started listening to podcast

I had been an active runner for close to 35 years but recently stopped because of the places we recently have lived. In Shanghai even though the air quality was good most of the time, we had our fair share of days when the quality was not good and running outside became hazardous, plus in the summer time it was just too hot. Now in KSA it is just to hot most of the year and during the summer months the winds pick up and there is a lot of dust in the air.

ME and I are now walking every day, early in the morning, before it gets too hot. After M.E. leaves for work I go back out and do more laps around the compound. Each lap takes about 12 minutes, about 1360 steps for those step counters and I do between 5-7 laps. After getting board of listening to myself think, I recently decided to listen to podcasts from some of my favorite radio programs. Podcast have been around for a while but for me this is something new to do. I can hear the under 35 crowd think, “Bob, this is like so yesterday” but for the over 50 crowd I think I am embracing technology pretty well. So now every day I load up my iPhone with yesterday shows and walk for a hour listening to the podcast.